Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/116

Rh 100 The subject allies who then fight under their banners include the Masu or Mysians and the Dardani of the Troad from Iluna or Ilion and Pidasa (Pedasus); and, if we follow Brugsch, Iluna should be read Mauna and identified with Mieonia. At the same time the Hittites left me morials of themselves in Lydia. Mr G. Dennis has dis covered an inscription in Hittite hieroglyphics attached to the figure of &quot;Niobe&quot; on Sipylus, and a similar inscription accompanies the figure (in which Herodotus [ii. 106] wished to see Sesostris or Ramses II.) carved on the clitf of Karabel, the pass which leads from the plain of Sardes to that of Ephesus. We learn from Eusebius that Sardes was first captured by the Cimmerians 1078 B.C.; and, since it was four centuries later before the real Cimmerians appeared on the horizon of history, we may perhaps find in the statement a tradition of the Hittite conquest. Possibly the Ninus of Herodotus points to the fact that Carchemish was called &quot;the old Ninus&quot; (Amm. Marc.,xiv. 8), while the mention of Belus may indicate that Hittite civilization came from the land of Bel (see Sayce, Trans. Soc. Biblical Arch., vii. 2). At all events it was when the authority of the Hittite satraps at Sardes began to decay that the Heraclid dynasty arose. According to Xanthus, Sadyattes and Lixus were the successors of Tylon the son of Omphale. After lasting five hundred and five years, the dynasty came to an end in the person of Sadyattes, as he is called by Nicolas of Damascus, whose account is doubtless derived from | Xanthus. The name Candaules given him by Herodotus meant &quot;dog-strangler,&quot; and was a title of the Lydian Hermes. Gyges, termed Gugu in the Assyrian inscriptions, Gog in the Old Testament, put him to death and established the dynasty of the Mermnads 690 B.C. (Euseb., 698 B.C.). Gyges initiated a new policy, that of making Lydia a maritime power; but his attempt to capture Old Smyrna was unsuccessful. Towards the middle of his reign the king dom was overrun by the Cimmerians, called Gimime in the Assyrian texts, Gomer in the Old Testament, who had been driven from their old seats on the Sea of Azoff by an invasion of Scythians, and thrown upon Asia Minor by the defeat they had suffered at the hands of Esar-haddon. The lower town of Sardes was taken by them, and Gyges turned to Assyria for aid, consenting to become the tributary of Assur-bani-pal or Sardanapalus, and sending him among other presents two Cimmerian chieftains he had himself captured in battle (about 660 B.C.). At first no one could be found in Nineveh who understood the language of the ambassadors. A few years later, Gyges joined in the revolt against Assyria, which was headed by the viceroy of Babylonia, Assur-bani-pal s own brother. The Ionic and Carian mercenaries he despatched to Egypt en abled Psammetichus to make himself independent. Assyria, however, was soon avenged. The Cimmerian hordes re turned, Gyges was slain in battle after a reign of thirty- eight years, and Ardys his son and successor returned to his allegiance to Nineveh. The second capture of Sardes on this occasion was alluded to by Callisthenes (Strabo, xiii. p. 627). Alyattes the grandson of Ardys finally succeeded in extirpating the Cimmerians, as well as in taking Smyrna, and thus providing his kingdom with a port. The trade and wealth of Lydia rapidly increased, and the Greek towns fell one after the other before the attacks of the Lydian kings. Alyattes s long reign of fifty-seven years saw the foundation of the Lydian empire. All Asia Minor west of the Halys owned his sway, and the six years contest he carried on with the Modes was closed by the marriage of his daughter Aryenis to Astyages, and an intimate alliance between the two empires. The Greek cities were allowed to retain their own institutions and government on condition of paying taxes and dues to the Lydian monarch, and the proceeds of their commerce thus flowed into the imperial exchequer. The result was that the king of Lydia became the richest prince of his age. Alyattes was succeeded by Croesus, who had probably already for some years shared the royal power with his father, or perhaps grandfather, as Floigl thinks (Geschichte des semitischen Alterthums, p. 20). He reigned alone only fifteen years, Cyrus the Persian, after an indecisive battle on the banks of the Halys, marching upon Sardes, and capturing both acropolis and monarch before his allies could come to his help (Euseb., 546 B.C.). The place where the acropolis was entered was believed to have been overlooked by the mythical Meles when he carried the lion round his fortress which made it invulnerable ; it was really a path opened by one of the landslips which have reduced the sandstone cliff of the Acropolis to a mere shell, and threaten in a few years to carry it altogether into the plain below. The overthrow of Croesus gave rise to many legends among both Lydians and Greeks, and he was held to have escaped death at the conqueror s hands through the intervention of the gods. The revolt of the Lydians under Pactyas, whom Cyrus had appointed to collect the taxes, caused the Persian king to disarm them, though we can hardly credit the statement that by this measure their former warlike spirit was crushed. Sardes now became the western capital of the Persian empire, and its burning by the Athenians was the indirect cause of the Persian War. After Alexander s death, Lydia passed to Antigonus : then Achreus made himself king at Sardes, but was defeated and put to death by Antiochus. The country was pre sented by the Romans to Eumenes, and subsequently formed part of the proconsular province of Asia. By the time of Strabo (xiii. p. 631) its old language was entirely supplanted by Greek. The Lydian empire may be described as tlie industrial power of the ancient world. The Lydians were credited with being the inventors, not only of games such as dice, huckle-bones, and ball (Herod., i. 94), but also of coined money. The oldest known coins are the electrum coins of the earlier Mermnads (Madden, Coins of the Jews, pp. 19-21), stamped on one side with a lion s head or the figure of a king with bow and quiver ; these were replaced by Croesus with a coinage of pure gold and silver. To the latter monarch were probably due the earliest gold coins of Ephesus (Head, Coinage of Eplicsus, p. 16). Mr Head has shown that the electrum coins of Lydia were of two kinds, one weighing 168 4 grains for the inland trade, and another of 224 grains for the trade with Ionia. The standard was the silver &quot; mina of Carchemish,&quot; as the Assyrians called it, which contained 8656 grains. Origin ally derived by the Hittites from Babylonia, but modified by themselves, this standard was passed on to the nations of Asia Minor during the period of Hittite conquest, but was eventually superseded by the Phoenician mina of 11,225 grains, and continued to survive only in Cyprus and Cilicia. The inns, which the Lydians were said to have been the first to establish (Herod., i. 94), were connected with their attention to commercial pursuits. Their literature has wholly perished, and the only specimen of their writ ing we possess is on a marble base found by Mr Wood at Ephesus (Schliemann, Ilios, p. 698). They were celebrated for their music and gymnastic exercises, and their art formed a link between that of Asia Minor and that of Greece. A marble lion at Achmetly re presents in a modified form the Assyrian type, and the engraved gems found in the neighbourhood of Sardes and Old Smyrna resemble the rude imitations of Assyrian workmanship met with in Cyprus and on the coasts of Asia Minor. For a description of a pectoral of white gold, ornamented with the heads of animals, human faces, and the figure of a goddess, discovered in a tomb on Tmolus, see Academy, January 15, 1881, p. 45. Lydian sculpture was probably similar to that of the Phrygians as displayed at Doghanly, Kurabet, and Ayazin, a necropolis lately discovered by MrPuunsay. Phallic emblems, for averting evil, were plentiful ; even the summit of the tomb of Alyattes is crowned with an enormous one of stone, about 9 feet in diameter. The tumulus itself is 281 yards in diameter and aboxit half a mile in circumference. It has been partially excavated by Spiegelthal and Dennis, and a sepulchral chamber discovered in the middle, composed of large well-cut and highly polished blocks of marble, the chamber being 11 feet long, nearly 8 feet broad, and 7 feet high. Nothing was found in it except a few ashes and a broken vase of Egyptian alabaster. The stone basement which, according to Herodotus, formerly surrounded t c mound has now disappeared. (A. H. S. )